A split uniform logarithmic ratio of 1 would probably be a much better default for people using distant terrain.

Discussion about that keeps swinging back and forth. Quite a while ago, I was under the impression that 0.5 was best with the default viewing distance and 1.0 was better with an extended distance, but when shadows were merged, people were telling me that actually, 0.95-ish was best for the default viewing distance. When I started mentioning that, people then started telling me that actually, 0.5 was the only value that didn't absolutely ruin distant shadows.

Well, sure. But at the very least, distant shadows being messed up is a lot more normal and "easy to expect" than nearby shadows being messed up. If someone looks at a plant and the shadows go from crisp to a smudged blobby mess, they're going to notice and get pulled out of the experience. That won't happen if they look at a hill in the distance and a shadow on it is flickering in a weird way; they won't even consider blaming the engine in that case.

Too early for 0.46 IMO:
1. There is a lot of pending pull requests
2. Nightlies still do not work with Bullet, compiled with a double precision support
3. Shadows still need some polishing and break rendering on some machines even when they are disabled.